Things one middle-aged economist finds interesting

August 2011

Jeff Jacoby does an excellent job taking on an argument I am seeing more and more often. Liberals--or Progressives, as some of them would prefer to be know these days--point to some federal government program, argue it is highly worthwhile, and then say, "See what we would lose if the conservatives get their way?" Jacoby summarizes a couple of recent versions:

Commenting on Twitter as the Texas governor announced his presidential candidacy, longtime Washington journalist Howard Kurtz wondered: “Perry wants to make DC ‘inconsequential in your life.’ Does that include Medicare, Soc Sec, vets’ programs, air safety, FDA?’’ Former Bobby Kennedy aide Jeff Greenfield ran through a litany of Washington’s contributions to American life - from railroads, interstate highways, and the Hoover Dam to land-grant colleges, civil rights, and subsidized mortgages - and marveled at the depth of the right’s “disdain for all things Washington.’’

Jacoby responds:

But it isn’t highways or veterans’ programs or minority voting rights that conservatives find so objectionable about Washington. When Perry speaks of making the nation’s capital “inconsequential,’’ he isn’t proposing to dismantle the Hoover Dam. Hard as it may be for liberals to accept, the Republican base isn’t motivated by blind loathing of the federal government, or by a nihilistic urge to wipe out the good that Washington has accomplished.

What conservatives believe, rather, is what America’s Founders believed: that government is best which governs least, and that human freedom and dignity are likeliest to thrive not when power is centralized and remote, but when it is diffuse, local, and modest.

Excellent!

Here's another reply: the federal government has been spending hundreds of billions--now trillions--of dollars each year. Surely, some of them provide some good for at least some Americans. But it's a logical fallacy--the fallacy of composition--that an example or two proves that the entire federal budget is being spent well.

Or: get back to me when the federal budget is spent largely on interstate highways, land-grant colleges, and civil rights. I'll wait.

One of the best ways to motivate people to act is with a good story. For people in the Pacific Northwest, this is a hell of a story.

“It breaks my heart to go out and tell people, ‘Hey, you know that place your grandparents immigrated to, the place you call home, that seaside cottage? Well, it turns out to be a high-risk disaster zone. Yeah. We get a massive earthquake every 300 to 500 years around here, and we’re due. They’re super bad. When it comes, it’s a monster. A full-rip nine.’ ”

By “full-rip nine” Corcoran means a mag­ni­tude-9.0 earthquake, the kind of massive off­shore temblor that triggered the tsunami that killed 28,050 people in Japan on March 11, 2011. Geologists call them megaquakes. Geo­logists also call the Northwest coast of North America—from Vancouver Island down to Northern California—one of the like­­liest next victims.

The other keys to her success, supposedly, were that "Cindy broadcasts toughness, a kind of forthright cowgirl confidence" and "She branded herself as American, constantly".

Better, but still pretty far off.

Allow me.

Ms. Crawford's success was a function of her understanding exactly what business she was in. She was selling an image. And she tried earnestly to sell that image reliably, and she was proud of the result. Her effort and her pride showed in House of Style and all her TV appearances. That and what I noted five years ago Issac Mizrahi said about her.